We can’t find the right difficulty on DOS2, either the battles are a 2-hour attack-and-retreat ordeal where we barely survive or we lower the difficulty one notch and just mow through everyone.
I’m going through Final Fantasy X: International Version on my PS4. I love blitzball so much. Right now I’m at the Moonflow.
Ah, the first random drop grind I ever did. I once tried to get every celestial weapon and max out the sphere grids. So many dead mimics, and I never even got close. But at that point, finishing the regular game was depressingly easy.
Pretty much describes every Final Fantasy game if you are able to find and defeat the strongest side-boss. At that point the story-related fights become pathetically easy.
(Also, look at FFXII where some of the side quests were just badly designed in that the rewards were meaningless by the time you finished the quest. I’m looking at you “Hunt Club”!)
I’ve been playing Talos Principle II recently. Nice mix of puzzle solving and philosophical musing. The first game is also quite good, and this is a continuation of the story.
Chants of Sennaar is also interesting. It’s a bit like being an archeologist and solving mysteries by learning the basics of several fictional ancient languages.
Persona 5 Tactica
Fun Persona game, decently solid JRPG tactics game. I would say that playing Persona 5 is more or less required, as this game assumes you are familiar with these characters. Having said that, Persona 5 is one of the best JRPG games of all time and you should play it.
I got this on sale for $40. Totally worth it.
Saw someone playing Balatro on YouTube and I had to buy it. Just $15 regular price.
Rogue-lite deck-building poker game. You get a points goal per round, and each round you get an 8-card hand (played cards are replaced from the main deck). You earn points by making poker hands with your cards, and each round you have a certain number of turns and discards in order to make your point goal. The deck-building rogue-lite part is you have a set of Jokers that buff certain cards and give points multipliers, because your goal quickly gets much higher than you could ever earn without multipliers.
Anyways, I don’t know if that sounds tedious or not in the description but it’s really fun, and if you’re a fan of either poker or rogue-lites, I’d recommend giving it a look.
I figured I’d put this here, but I’ve recently been playing Fallout 76. I’m a huge fan of the series, but wasn’t interested in seeing what looked to be Fallout 4 with multiplayer and no NPCS. Plus, I don’t buy games at full price / pre-order with unspeakably few exceptions. So I missed the bug ridden, crappy mess the game was at release.
But recently it was on a steam sale for under $8 and I got it. Overall, it’s probably worthwhile at the $10-20 range. Yes, I hate the modern trend for always online games, and it has waaaaay to much WoW-esque world quests and events, but the griefing is far less than the historical records show, there are human NPCs so it’s not all a “follow the holotape” sequence (although plenty of that still), and you can largely ignore the group stuff as long as you’re okay with less spectacular gear.
Be Warned though, if you’re a classic Fallout “Hoard everything” player from 3/NV/4, you’ll have to re-adjust, max storage is quite limited if you don’t (and I won’t) pay for the premium service.
Been playing Helldivers 2 with friends. Basically Starship Troopers with the serial numbers more lightly scuffed rather than sanded off. Which it makes zero attempt to hide and leans into 100%. Get sent in a squad of 1-4 down to a planet, fight bugs or Terminator-esque bots as you accomplish your object, called down a dropship and get out. Sort of a grind solo, can be fun with the right randoms and truly shines when you’re with a group of friends: Having someone help reload your rocket launcher as someone else takes aim down a giant bug’s mouth with an anti-materiel rifle and another calls down an orbital nuke strike – all the while declaring your loyalty to Super Earth and “Managed Democracy” is great times if you remotely enjoy shooters.
It did suffer some rough launch patches but seems to have cleared most of that up. It’s been super popular the last few weeks though so I assume most people who would be into it are already aware of it.
I continued my soulslike addiction and started Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. In my case, I’ve died a lot more than twice. It’s a great game with enough difference from the Dark Souls/Elden Ring combat and levelling systems to make it feel fresh. Finally made it to the final boss, and it’s been slow and steady to move through. I can beat the first phase reliably, generally past the second, but I’ve only beat the third phase once. After that, I’m sure I’ll be back to Palworld.
I’ve just bought ‘Smalland: Survive the Wilds’, in my ongoing search for the perfect survival/crafting game. I couldn’t wait for Grounded to hit the PS5 in April. Smalland involves playing an imp-type creature, making houses out of leaves, and so on. The scenery’s quite beautiful, though the crawling insects are a tad clunky, which at least helps evade them as it seems pretty tough so far.
It’s a pleasant relief after revisiting ‘The Forest’ recently. I can’t believe that game has both terrifying flayed-looking cannibals, and the option to decorate your home. Not for me.
I’ve been alternating between playing Caves of Qud, No Man’s Sky and Stellaris for the last few weeks. The first has been my default for “I’m bored, what should I do?” for quite a while, and a new patch just came out for Stellaris which impelled me to play a lot the last few days.
Caves of Qud is a roguelike with simple graphics but pretty complicated mechanics. It’s set in a far future after multiple rises-and-falls of civilizations (one of its inspirations was Gamma World). You can play either a mutant (my present character has four arms, two heads, several psychic powers and an electrical attack, for example), or a “True Kin” with higher stats and the ability to use cybernetics.
I’m still playing Yixian, a free-to-play autobattling game where you set up an 8-move attack combo for your kung fu warrior and then you match off against other opponents and their combos. It’s vaguely like Super Auto Pets, but with martial arts moves instead of cute animals.
I don’t think I’ll ever be great at it, but there are enough characters and move sets that it’s fun to tinker around with.
is it a card game? because that’s what it shows when I looked it up …
Yes, the moves are in the form of cards. You create a “hand” of 8 and they get played one at a time in order as an attack combo. Then between rounds you randomly draw some new cards that you can use to improve your “hand”.
ahh k thanks
Just started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and I am finding it almost unbearably tedious. I’ve got 2 hours on my playfile already, and I still haven’t done anything I’d describe as genuinely playing the game. Countless cutscenes, a bit of gameplay but it’s in flashback so nothing you do “counts” and anyway you’re overpowered so it’s just “press square to kill enemies,” and then a bunch of slow-walking dialogue sections - all culminating in my least favorite thing in video games: your character is injured so you have to limp even more slowly toward your destination.**
I’ve been growing apart from the Final Fantasy series for at least a decade now, as it seems to me that SquareEnix is getting more and more resentful that they’re making video games and not interactive movies, but the last FFVII remake was a lot better in that regard. In this case, I’m having a lot of trouble generating the interest to even continue my playthrough; if I hadn’t already paid for it, I’d delete it and move onto something that’s not so hostile to my desire to play it.
** Seriously, why do game companies put these sequences in games at all. Are there people who like this?
After recent games I’ve played (and especially after Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain), two phrases which immediately make me stop reading a review for a game are: “Souls like” and “Lots of Cutscenes”, I’m considering starting a list tracking them in case they slip onto my wishlist.
I dont mind cut scenes as long as they’re entertaining and have something to do with the plot…if they’re like Wing Commander 3 that had cutscenes of walking in the room or upstairs. anytime you went somewhere …well ima turning them off
Yeah, I dropped Read Dead Redemption 2 after the first hour, in large part due to all the freaking cutscenes. I find it much more common in console ports than in native PC games.
Starcraft-style cutscenes–beautifully produced short vignettes that pop up every few hours of play–are great. Metal Gear-style cutscenes–long, tedious B-movies that make up a good chunk of playing time–are intolerable.